Operation Ivy Bells
Operation Ivy Bells was a joint United States Navy, CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) mission whose objective was to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communication lines during the Cold War. Background During the Cold War, the United States wanted to learn more about Soviet submarine and missile technology, specifically ICBM test and nuclear first strike capability. In the early 1970s the U.S. government learned of the existence of an undersea communications cable in the Sea of Okhotsk, which connected the major Soviet Pacific Fleet naval base at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula to the Soviet Pacific Fleet's mainland headquarters at Vladivostok. At the time, the Sea of Okhotsk was claimed by the Soviet Union as territorial waters, and was strictly off limits to foreign vessels, and the Soviet Navy had installed a network of sound detection devices along the seabed to detect intruders. The area also saw numerous surface and subsurface naval exercises. Installation Despite these obstacles, the potential for an intelligence coup was too great to ignore, and in October 1971 the United States sent the purpose-modified submarine deep into the Sea of Okhotsk. Divers working from the Halibut found the cable in of water and installed a long device, which wrapped around the cable without piercing its casing and recorded all communications made over it. The large recording device was designed to detach if the cable was raised for repair. The tapping of the Soviet naval cable was so secret that most sailors involved did not have the security clearance needed to know about it. A cover story was thus created to disguise the actual mission: It was claimed that the spy submarines were sent to the Soviet naval range in the Sea of Okhotsk to recover the Soviet [[SS-N-12|SS-N-12 Sandbox]] supersonic anti-ship missile (AShM) debris so that countermeasures could be developed. Although created as a cover story, this mission was actually carried out with great success: U.S. Navy divers recovered all of the SS-N-12 debris, with the largest debris no larger than 6 inches, and a total of more than 2 million pieces. The debris were taken back to the U.S. and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory reconstructed the AShM based on these pieces, and at least one sample was also reverse engineered. They discovered that the SS-N-12 AShM was guided by radar only, and the infrared (IR) guidance previously suspected did not exist. From the samples built, countermeasures were successfully developed and deployed. Use Each month, divers retrieved the recordings and installed a new set of tapes. The recordings were then delivered to the NSA for processing and dissemination to other U.S. intelligence agencies. The first tapes recorded revealed that the Soviets were so sure of the cable's security that the majority of the conversations made over it were unencrypted. The eavesdropping on the traffic between senior Soviet officers provided an invaluable view inside naval operations at Petropavlovsk, the Pacific Fleet's primary nuclear submarine base, home to Yankee and Delta class nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines. Eventually, more taps were installed on Soviet lines in other parts of the world, with more advanced instruments built by AT&T's Bell Laboratories that were nuclear powered and could store a year's worth of data. Other submarines were used for this role, including , , . Compromise Ronald William Pelton, a 44-year-old veteran of the NSA, was fluent in Russian and considered to be a highly skilled communications analyst/specialist, but very bad at personal finance. Hostile toward the agency and dissatisfied with his position, Pelton was $65,000 in debt and filed for personal bankruptcy just three months before he resigned. With only a few hundred dollars in the bank, Pelton walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC in January 1980 and offered to sell what he knew to the KGB for money. No documents were passed from Pelton to the Soviets, as he had an extremely good memory. He reportedly received $35,000 from the KGB for the intelligence he provided from 1980 to 1983, and for the intelligence on the Operation Ivy Bells, the KGB gave him $5,000. The Soviets did not immediately take any action on this information. However, in 1981, surveillance satellites showed Soviet warships, including a salvage vessel, anchored over the site of the tap in the Sea of Okhotsk. USS Parche was dispatched to recover the device, but her divers were unable to find it and it was concluded that the Soviets had taken it. It remains unclear why it took the Soviets so long, although a plausible explanation is that it was used to feed disinformation to U.S. defense intelligence. In July 1985, Vitaly Yurchenko, a KGB colonel who was Pelton's initial contact in Washington D.C., defected to the U.S. and provided the information that eventually led to Pelton's arrest. The recording device captured by the Soviets was later put on public display in a museum in Moscowhttp://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/ic2000/ic2000.htm#N_32_. See also * Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage — a book that covers this incident. It also includes a description of the Walker spy ring role in its dangerous compromise of technical secrets of some of the tactical capabilities of U.S. Navy nuclear submarines and critical covert intelligence gathering operations during the Cold War. * Roger C. Dunham. "Spy Sub - Top Secret Mission To The Bottom Of The Pacific". Penguin Books, USA; New York, NY, 1996. ISBN 0-451-40797-0 * Espionage Act of 1917 - The law under which Pelton was prosecuted. External links * "Spy Book Fact of the Day: Ivy Bells" from the Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage promotion site at Random House * "Operation Ivy Bells Sea of Okhotsk, Russia, 1970s-1981" at Special Operations.com * Red November, Inside the Secret U.S. Soviet Submarine War Category:1971 establishments Category:1971 in the Soviet Union Category:1971 in the United States Category:1981 disestablishments Category:1981 in the Soviet Union Category:1981 in the United States Ivy Bells Category:Soviet Union–United States relations Ivy Bells Ivy Bells Category:Sea of Okhotsk Category:Signals intelligence Ivy Bells Category:History of telecommunications Category:1981 in international relations Category:1970 in international relations Category:1971 in international relations ja:アイヴィー・ベル uk:Операція «Берізка»